


Wednesday

by CaptainErica



Series: Studying Defeats You Eventually [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Wednesday, a little less studying for Hermione today
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-16 09:18:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17546924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainErica/pseuds/CaptainErica
Summary: Hermione studies for Potions and Ancient Runes... or really she's well caught up today.





	Wednesday

Wednesday was for Potions and Ancient Runes.

Hermione had double potions in the morning, then a short break before a study group she ran with 1st years (both those who were repeating, and those who were new, of course), and then came lunch and a free period. This meant that Hermione was perfectly set to eat a quick lunch and then spend the next hour or so studying for potions with very few interruptions.

She had Ancient Runes right after this break, and so it made sense to study for it after dinner. It was important to her to study in the common room for Ancient Runes, similar to her preference for doing so on Fridays for Arithmancy. She needed to have the ability to stay up if she got carried away, or, maybe more importantly: she could be convinced to go to bed by her housemates, or to relax if it came to it.

Over break she’d gotten extremely ahead in her courses, which was to be expected but it meant that she was kind of out of things to do except for just the day to day homework assignments.

For her free period today she is in the library, though she had finished her homework for Slughorn during class. It was better than walking the stairs back up to Gryffindor tower. She could have done some rounds, could be working on her duty sheets for the Prefects but…

But she had found a book in her trunk that was tickling her fancy just now, and it was far more interesting than reviewing her notes on medicinal potion-making.  She was completely absorbed, completely, until…

“Sorry, Weasley.” A slightly nasally voice says from behind her, and Hermione’s attention to the book snaps and she freezes.

“No problem, Malfoy! Nice catch.” Ginny says, bright, unconcerned, and then she’s settling into the open seat at the table as if she hadn’t just had some sort of alteration with Malfoy directly behind Hermione’s back.

Directly behind her. Had Malfoy been sitting there? For how long? He usually avoided her outside of Prefect meetings and the like.

Ginny pulls open her bag, drops a book on the table, and then sits back with a sigh. “Apparently having been a big part of the DA movement last year doesn’t get me out of studying for quizzes.” She says, and Hermione raises an eyebrow, setting her book down gently, holding her place with her thumb.

“No, I would imagine it wouldn’t…” She says, leading, feels like there is more to this story.

Ginny sighs again, adds an eye roll. “Well I might have gotten _fresh_ or something, but the book was _wrong._ ” She says, insists, and Hermione snorts.

“I doubt it.” She says, “It’s possibly just not updated, or it’s talking about something else, come on, show me.” She says, fully putting her book down, definitely losing her page as she goes to help Ginny figure this out.

When she goes to put it in her bag before Ancient Runes, she notices that her book has a small, silver bookmark holding her page; it’s pretty and absolutely not something she’s ever owned. She frowns to herself, just a little, but then shakes it off as something she will consider later on.

Later on comes as she’s sitting in the Common Room with Neville, Dean, and Ginny waiting for dinner. They’re all rather caught up in terms of work, so it’s a casual atmosphere. She’s got her book on the arm of her chair, listening in on the conversation Ginny is having with Dean about sports that she absolutely has no care for herself.

“Hermione, that bookmark…” Neville says, a little quiet, and Hermione blinks and reaches for the book, flipping it open to pull the bookmark out the rest of the way. “Ah, I thought so.” He says, which is extremely suspicious.

She sits up a little, looking at him more fully now. “What?” She asks, a little bit of confusion coloring her tone.

Neville wrinkles his nose a little, eyes screwing up like he’s trying to remember something, then he sighs and shakes his head. “One of my aunts used to make them, can’t remember which, whenever we had big family get-togethers it was hard to get any peace, you know?” He says with a nod toward them, “Can’t remember the spell though, neat little trick.” He says, as if she wasn’t now worried.

“A spell? I didn’t make it, Neville, it was just… _there_ when I got up to leave the library.”

Neville shrugs, “Maybe someone else did?” He suggests, but now he’s clearly feeling like he shouldn’t have brought it up.

Hermione lets it go, for his sake, nodding and thoughtful. She flips the book over on the arm of the chair so it’s held open, and carefully lifts the bookmark as Neville is called in to defend Ginny’s side of the now-argument (he has no idea what they’re talking about). The bookmark was light, silver, and almost… it felt like some sort of French style. When she looked at it a little closer, she could see that it was really made up of two little dragon-like figures, more snake-like in their design than easily recognizable as a Hungarian Horntail. The long, thin bodies made it so they could twine around and create the pretty design, but this meant that coupled with who she knew to be in the Library at the same time as her she could guess who made her the bookmark.

It didn’t make sense, though; why would Draco Malfoy do that?

Hermione doesn’t have Ancient Runes work to do, so she goes down to the Library to search out information on what type of charm would lead to one making a bookmark.

She keeps the bookmark in her hand as she searches through the aisles, keen to figure out at least this mystery. All she needs is the right kind of charms book, and then… Ah, perfect. She finds a couple of likely books, one on transfiguring small objects and one on creating small objects, and heads to Madam Pince to check them out; she’ll need to figure out if it was truly its own spell like Neville believed, or if it was just very fine transfiguration. She hoped for the former because new charms are always interesting, but believed it to be the latter.

Either way it would have been impressive silent magic.

She leaves the Library and walks slowly up the hall, thumb smoothing over the front of the silver, feeling the bumps of the dragons’ noses. It was odd, wasn’t it? Or was it not, and she had just failed to notice something about him over the past few months. He was quieter, certainly, and kinder wasn’t a word she could use for him because _beaten_ and _low_ were better. Sorry, was another good word to describe him, possibly also _dejected._

He was the same boy he had been before the war, but yet at the same time wholly different: a silly child who hadn’t known any better, grown forcefully into someone who knew all too well how wrong he had been. Or maybe who knew now that he’d had no idea what he was being thrust into, and now had to live with what he had done and seen.

She knew _that_ feeling. Knew the feeling of the war and what it cost and it took all too well. She could see the nightmares written on her dorm mates’ faces in the mornings, and she could hear them some nights when she just couldn’t bring herself to close the curtains around her four-poster.

Lost in her musings, Hermione comes up short when she hears voices ahead of her.

“Well, I’m here for the NEWTS, you know that.” A rather shrill voice says, and it takes Hermione a moment but she recognizes it as Pansy Parkinson (still not her favorite person, but at least she wasn’t so ghastly anymore).

There’s quiet for a moment, just footsteps, and then a male voice, deep: Blaise. “No reason for that, since you want to be a journalist, none of the NEWTS courses will help you with that.” He says, and Pansy huffs, and the only reason Hermione can hear it is because she’s gotten nearer them as they spoke, clearly on a course to pass right by them.

“Now, now, Blaise, maybe she’ll need a working knowledge of the subjects she’ll be covering, hm?” Malfoy pipes up with, and it’s both teasing and almost kind; like he’s trying to _actually_ tone down Blaise’s derision. But then again, Hermione thinks as she sees them coming toward her, probably on the way to the Library themselves, hadn’t she and Malfoy been dating? Before? Or had that just been an assumption of theirs?

“Someone _gets_ me.” Pansy says, a little dramatic but it makes Hermione’s lips twitch up at the corner in amusement as she steps to the side to pass around the three of them, thumb still rubbing over the warm silver.

“Granger, meant to ask at the meeting-“ Blaise says, clearly having seen her despite her best efforts to remain within her own head. The group stops, she hears it, so she halts as well, turning to look at them with her head tilted.

“Yes, Zabini?” She asks, eyes wandering only briefly to first Pansy and then Malfoy before going quickly back to Blaise.

Blaise grins at her, and she hates that so she rolls her eyes; he does it because she responded in kind to him instead of pointedly calling him _Blaise_ like she normally does. “Do we get Valentine’s off? Only Pansy’s been pestering me, see, and-“ He’s cut off, a smile still on his face, as Pansy makes some softly annoyed _shushing_ sounds at him.

Hermione shakes her head, amusement clear on her face, “we can’t all be off that day, _Blaise_ ,” She says, pointed, and it makes him grin at her again in that way that should make her stomach do a flip but instead just makes her want to roll her eyes in a fond way. “But if you, or someone in your acquaintance would like to guarantee they’ve no rounds that day I would not be above allowing it when making the schedule next week.”

She catches Malfoy’s amused look, thinks it makes his face look less harsh and pointy, but then is brought back to Pansy and Blaise rather quickly so she can’t really appreciate the look (her thumb rubs over the bookmark a little harder).

“So I can just drop you a note?” Pansy asks, like it hadn’t occurred to her at all, and Hermione nods.

“Just like any other day.” She says, a reminder. “I try to make the rounds schedule fair and even, and knowing schedules helps.” She doesn’t add _obviously_ at the end, though it is probably understood, because she’s trying to be polite and fair and not let her past interactions with them influence her behavior now (specifically Pansy, but it’s simply because her voice grates on Hermione’s nerves, like everything she is saying is a bit of a whine).

Pansy nods, and Blaise thanks her, and Hermione hums in response. She turns to leave them, then, and notices that Malfoy’s eyes are on her fist, the glint of silver most definitely visible to him. She sees a smile pass over his lips, or at least she thinks that she does; it’s gone almost as quickly as her mind registers it being there, and then he’s nodding to her with an almost neutral look on his face and she’s turning away.

He was hard to read, though, she has to remind herself as she heads up to the stairs and starts the trek to the dormitory. He was easy to deal with in the smaller classes they had together, like Arithmancy and Runes, because there were less people, and if they were paired up he was quiet and did his work, offered smart responses to her questions or her arguments. In bigger classrooms he was a little more talkative, but not to her (though why would he be? She sat on the opposite side of the room from him in most classes, surrounded by her friends). He was also a little more acidic, a little more likely to tell the people around him off.

No, he was easier to deal with one-on-one, she decides, as if this had been the reason for her train of thought to begin with. If she needed to ask him about the bookmark (should, really, should thank him because it was a nice gesture), then she could do it one-on-one.

Pleased with this thought and the round-about way she got there, she continues her walk to the Common Room with her thoughts on the possible transfiguration spells that could have led to the piece of metal in her hands, and decidedly not on Draco Malfoy.


End file.
